Friday, January 09, 2004

"Youngster: Wow. So no matter how boneheaded an incompetent manager I am, my department is 100% guaranteed to be profitable as long as I’m good at keeping my receipts?

Trainer: Absolutamente! But wait—there’s more: the more money you can profligately waste, the more money your department will earn. In fact, if you can spend enough, and increase our profits even more, we’ll even give you bonus, equal to 50 basis points on the amount you can spend over and above what you spent last week.

Youngster: Cool! So who pays my bonus? Does that come out of my own departmental budget? Or does it come out of the human services budget?

Trainer: It comes out of your department’s budget. Or rather, it goes into it. Because bonus expenses are a business expense, your department is reimbursed for your bonus expense, plus 2% of your bonus. At 50 basis points of 2%, you get 25 percent of the overage for your own bonus. Which itself is another business expense, of course. Which generates another reimbursement. Which generates another bonus. For you! This is the greatest business concept since multi-level marketing. Imagine the possibilities! Ain’t life grand? Imagine the possibilities!

Youngster: Is the bonus in the form of a paper check? Or an automatic deposit?

Trainer: Neither. Neither method is expensive enough. We send a courier to find you in the field, and we just hand you a sack full of cash. Arthur Anderson reports that 2% of every cash dollar in a business leaves in an employee’s pocket. So we just assume the courier’s a thief, and write off 2% in theft as an expense. The expense—along with the courier’s fee-- is reimbursed by the government, of course, plus an additional 2%-7% profit margin. "